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Here's how Kevin O'Leary and Big Tech can solve the AI data center backlash
Kevin "Mr. Wonderful" O'Leary is encountering vocal opposition to his plans for a huge data center in Utah. VALERIE MACON / AFP via Getty Images Americans don't agree on much. But a majority of them don't want to live near a data center. That's a real problem for AI boosters. Analyst Ben Thompson has a suggestion: Cut everyone — everyone — a check. Kevin O'Leary makes a great villain. The celebrity investor spent decades honing his image as the least likable rich guy on "Shark Tank," reveling in what he calls brutal honesty. Last year riffed on that persona in "Marty Supreme," highlighted by a scene where he spanks Timothée Chalamet with a ping pong paddle.So it's not surprising that he's just emerged as the hateable face of the AI Data Center Backlash, as he promotes a massive development in Utah.Stories about opposition to the O'Leary-backed, 40,000-acre Stratos Project have hit national outlets and social media in the last month. Tucker Carlson, who knows a hot button when he sees one, had O'Leary on his show last week, setting him up as a real-life Mr. Monopoly out to exploit Utah taxpayers.Now O'Leary is arguing that people who don't like his project are professional protesters, funded via shadowy boogeymen. But the details about O'Leary's project and the people who hate it are beside the point: Opposition to data centers is a widespread, bipartisan phenomenon throughout the US, as recent Gallup polling shows.The technocratic backlash to the backlash is to tell people who don't like data centers that they're wrong, and that data centers don't really hog precious water or energy. (Business Insider published a prize-winning series about these claims and counter-claims last year.)But this one feels like it's broken containment. Data centers are convenient repositories for everyone's fears and anxieties about AI — not just what it may or may not do to our environment, but to what it will do to everything, starting with our economic future.Again: That anxiety is totally reasonable. Because everyone — starting with the people running the biggest AI companies — predicts that AI will unleash massive changes in the workforce.We're also told that all of this is inevitable, and that we don't really have a say in it — you can't hold back technology! — and that all we can do is hope to adapt. So pushing back against a data center project in your town seems like a pretty reasonable kind of protest vote. Maybe I can't keep AI from upending my life, but at least...
Kevin O'Leary Proposes a $100 Billion AI Data Center In Utah - Parade
"Shark Tank's" Kevin O'Leary is backing a $100 billion data center in rural Utah, much to the dismay of residents. Hear what they have to say.
Kevin O'Leary Thinks People Opposing AI Data Center Are From China
Kevin O'Leary, who is backing the development of a massive data center in Utah, believes the people who are opposing it are from the Chinese government. The Shark Tank investor, 71, recently appeared on Fox News and asked, "Who would want us to stop building our electrical grid? Who would want to stop us from […]
Kevin O'Leary pushes back on Tucker Carlson's data center concerns ...
Carlson asked. The interview comes amid mounting backlash over O'Leary's proposed 40,000-acre Stratos data center project in Utah, which opponents say could strain the state's water and power resources while offering relatively few long-term jobs.
